And we maintain that elephants contribute to the welfare of children of all ages.
Last call at Kingston, Illinois.
But the idea of managing hunting preserves as a strategy for conserving wild elephant bothers people. When you have a philosopher's freedom to play with ideas without having to respect the box of existing institutions (whether those be of property rights or of bribes and favors) you can propose some interesting things.
According to conservationism, scarce and precious resources should be conserved and used wisely. According to preservation ethics, we should not think of wilderness as merely a resource. Wilderness commands reverence in a way mere resources do not. Each philosophy, I argue, can fail by its own lights, because trying to put the principles of conservationism or preservationism into institutional practice can have results that are the opposite of what the respective philosophies tell us we ought to be trying to achieve. For example, if the wisest use of South American rainforests is no use at all, then in that case conservationism by its own lights defers to preservationism. Analogously, if, when deprived of the option of preserving elephants as a resource, Africans respond by not preserving elephants at all, then in that case preservationism by its own lights defers to conservationism.The article gets into the meaning of "waste", asking, for instance if the harvest of a large, rare tree produces benefits in the form of housing or furniture does in fact confer net benefits. That argument becomes more interesting if it's possible to fence off the trees, and sell harvesting rights, and replant the grounds. And in the absence of incentives to manage the hunt, the end outcome might be no elephants preserved in Africa at all.
It's likely, though, that there might be some interesting Thanksgiving conversations about the ethics of hunting at Our President's house.
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